Participants reported that the movement exercises gave them an opportunity to explore new ways of experiencing musical ideas through noticing how they moved to music. Some participants explained that they were able to transfer this experience to their performance as a means of exploring musical ideas during practising. One way of attributing meaning to this transfer process from music to movement then back to music is by relating my participants’ experience to Johnson’s theory of Image Schemata and in particular, the image schematic structure of musical meaning (Johnson 2007: 243, 257).
Johnson describes his concept of Image Schemata as ‘basic structures of sensorimotor experience by which we encounter a world that we can understand and act within’ (Johnson 2007: 136). One way we can use Image Schemata for abstract conceptualization is through the use of metaphor (ibid.: 141). Drawing on his earlier work with Lakoff (1980: 14–21) he describes the pervasiveness of metaphor in everyday life, not just in language but also in thought and action, such as structural metaphors
Tunday: This worked well because I had a sort of a natural connection
Mercedes: I felt the whole exercise was really liberating … I’d forgot that I can relate that (movement) to life as well as playing my instrument. I’m just discovering this now … there is a natural way of reacting to certain music or sounds and if I am able to follow or go that natural way, I think it is more exciting. I think everything is actually inside, it’s a matter of allowing it to come out it’s already in the body, the body already knows what to do. When the brain interferes somehow it stops everything.
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where one concept is metaphorically structured in terms of another. But there is also another kind of metaphorical concept, one that does not structure one concept in terms of another but instead organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another. Lakoff and Johnson call these orientational metaphors, since most have to do with spatial orientation: up–down, in–out, front–back, deep–shallow and centre– periphery. They explain that these spatial orientations arise from the fact that we have bodies of the sort we have and that they function as they do in our physical environment. They suggest that orientational metaphors give a concept a spatial orientation: for instance, happy is up and sad is down. They point out that the fact that the concept ‘happy’ is orientated up leads to expressions in English like ‘I’m feeling up today’, ‘my spirits rose’ – and that the concept ‘sad’ is orientated down, leading to expressions like ‘I’m depressed, ‘he’s really low these days’ or ‘my spirits sank’ – is not arbitrary, but has a basis in our physical and cultural experience. By relating these ideas to Johnson’s later work (2007: 243) and his concept of Image Schemata and the bodily grounding of musical meaning it becomes possible to attribute meaning to my participants’ sense making of their movement experience in relation to musical ideas via orientational metaphor: relating pitch to the orientational metaphor of up and down and the expansion of a musical phrase to the metaphor of in and out, for example.
In terms of the bodily grounding of musical meaning, Joey was able to re-experience and imagine the feeling of the movements he made. He seemed to engage in the process of interpreting these kinaesthetic images, which arose from the music through his directional movements (vertical, horizontal and saggital) and which he described as almost dance-like. His experience can be related to image schemas that have to do with our spatial orientation – for example, the Verticality schema, which Johnson explains ‘emerges from our tendency to employ an up–down orientation in picking out meaningful structures of our experiences’ (Johnson 1987: xiv). In music, this schema allows us to conceptualize the domain of pitch frequency in terms of a spatial vertical orientation. For instance, we describe melodies as rising and falling; melodic contours in terms of peaks and dips, and registral space can be said to be wide or narrow, expanded or contracted. Minna also saw that there was potential in working this way
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and, additionally, in thinking about the impact of exploring musical concepts through body movement. She openly participated in group exercises and her attitude was open to trying new ways of working and embrace new experiences.
Jacq, on the other hand, said that the exercises were more useful for her health and well-being than as a means of exploring musical concepts. However, she saw the possibility of focusing on the movement of her breathing and how a body movement approach to breath awareness can help to realize and improve her vocal pitching. This experience can also be related to the Verticality schema. Take, for instance, the bodily sensation of muscular contraction and relaxation associated with our experience of pitch production. Some of our muscles contract when we produce higher pitches with our voices and some relax when we produce a lower pitch. The physiological correlation between muscular tension and pitch may be one reason why we tend to associate more readily an increase of tension with rising pitch and a release of tension with lowering pitch. Jacq found it challenging to fully commit to the exercises although she assured herself that she was more relaxed and happier as time went on. Her experience can be related to the Balance schema, which explains our emotional states of well-being (Johnson 1987: 89).
In Jacq’s case it seems as though she was searching for physical equilibrium and the movement exercises gave her a way of finding a balance of emotional forces and pressures. She mentions feeling angry and that the movement/music exercises gave her an opportunity to manage her anger. This could relate to Lakoff and Kovecses’ argument that ‘emotions like anger are experienced on a model of hot fluid within a container (usually closed). Emotions can simmer, well up, overflow, boil over, erupt and explode when the pressure builds up’ (Lakoff and Kovecses 1987). Jacq seemed to realize that she needed to re-establish her equilibrium in order to help improve her performance as a singer by finding a connection between her body and her lived world. Her account of her experience can also relate to Skinner’s idea that body movement exercises which involve imagery can help the performer ‘to work with the body rather than in spite of it’ (Skinner et al. 1979: 10). It seems that at times, Jacq is fighting her
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body rather than nurturing it and finds it challenging to shift her centre of balance to accommodate change.
In contrast, Tunday seemed engrossed by the movement exercises. He used his imagination to connect his movement with his musical ideas and was enthusiastic to experience things from a fresh perspective. He associated his experience of ascending and descending movements with intensity (varying degrees of loud and soft). This can also be understood by the Verticality schema. As Johnson explains, ‘this schema emerges from our tendency to employ an up-down orientation in picking out meaningful structures of our experiences’ (Johnson 1987: xiv). For example, our everyday body movement experiences of turning the volume up and down on the TV, sitting down and standing up, going up and down an escalator, lifting a cup up to our lips or reaching down to stroke a cat can reinforce the idea of the Verticality schema in that we can make sense out of our bodily experiences of moving up and down. In terms of Tunday’s experience of relating moving up and down to degrees of loud and soft dynamics in the music seems at odds with Johnson’s use of this schema in structuring our musical concepts. He relates the Verticality schema to musical pitch and suggests that our conception of pitch is understood in terms of their location on a spatial vertical continuum. For example, pitches of faster frequency are located higher on the continuum and pitches of a slower frequency are located lower on the continuum. However, in the case of Tunday, he used the Verticality schema to organize his concept of difference in amplitude rather than difference in frequency to differences in height. This highlights a limitation of Johnson’s work in that it is often too simplistic to explain the complexities and differences by which people relate musical elements to movement.
Mercedes appeared to feel inhibited at first but gradually took the chance to use her imagination. By thinking about creating musical ideas through her experience of movement qualities, such as dab, flick, thrust and float, she was able to successfully translate her images of these movements into her playing. However, she continued to find it challenging to use props in the movement exercises, especially the exercise tracing the shape of the phrase with peacock feather. She seemed to encounter a
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blockage which made her feel uncomfortable in her body and she noticed that she felt very heavy. This experience can be related to Johnson’s Blockage or Resistance schema, which can describe the structure of our experience of encountering a barrier of some sort that impedes or resist the progress of a forceful action (Johnson 1987: 45). Here, Mercedes’ account of her experience of directing the feather to express a musical phrase seems to be blocked by her anxiety, which manifests in her report of feeling of heavy and rigid in response to this movement exercise.
I have included Figure 5.3, below, because of its explanatory significance regarding human movement as a way of meaning making.
Life and movement are inextricably connected. Attention to bodily movements is thus one of the keys to understanding how things and experiences become meaningful to organisms like us, via our sensorimotor capacities … a great deal of our perceptual knowledge comes from movement, both our bodily motions and our interactions with moving objects
Johnson, 2007: 19
Figure 5.3 Life and movement
The topics of metaphor, imagery and imagination were also noticeable in the way Minna and Mercedes experienced a sense of generating new opportunities. Minna’s use of the metaphor of ‘opening doors’ suggested that she had found a way in to or a way out of something. The image of ‘opening doors’ also suggests a feeling of freedom, an opportunity to experiment, make choices and to re-think conceptions. All the participants made some reference to their experience of exploring new ways of thinking about their interaction with music as performers through body movement encounters. For example, Tunday described his movement experience of shaping a musical phrase with the ball by explaining that he saw himself in different locations at different points in the phrase. As he was moving with the musical phrase, he imagined himself as a runner focused on winning a race. This goal-orientated image can be related to the Space–Path–Goal schema. This schema organizes our sense of motion. In music, we often describe a
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change in event in terms of a motion from one point to another. For instance, we link single pitches together and turn them into melodies that move from point to point. In musical space, we move from high to low registers, from the first section to the second section and from phrase to phrase. The significance in this situation of conceptualization, metaphor, imagery and body movement brought into play Johnson’s notion of the bodily basis of musical meaning and the image-schematic structure of musical meaning.